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    The Sacred Rite of Magical Love: A Ceremony of Word and Flesh
    The Sacred Rite of Magical Love: A Ceremony of Word and Flesh
    The Sacred Rite of Magical Love: A Ceremony of Word and Flesh
    Ebook125 pages1 hour

    The Sacred Rite of Magical Love: A Ceremony of Word and Flesh

    By Maria de Naglowska and Donald Traxler

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    The first English translation of Maria de Naglowska’s sexually magical novella, Le rite sacré de l’amour magique

    • Contains autobiographical material from Maria de Naglowska’s life

    • Continues, in symbolic story form, the sexual initiatory teachings expounded in Naglowska’s The Light of Sex and Advanced Sex Magic

    • Includes a summary of Naglowska’s religious doctrine in her own words

    Available for the first time in English, The Sacred Rite of Magical Love is a mystical, sexually magical novella written by Maria de Naglowska--the Russian mystic and esoteric high priestess of 1930s Paris. Her religious system, called the Third Term of the Trinity, taught the importance of sex for the upliftment of humanity.

    A natural continuation of Naglowska’s The Light of Sex and Advanced Sex Magic, this volume also contains autobiographical material from Maria de Naglowska’s life. Full of symbolic language and hidden meanings, the story follows a young woman named Xenophonta as she experiences the apparition of a dark force, whom she calls the Master of the Past and to whom she dedicates her heart and her service. En route to a midnight rendezvous with him, Xenophonta encounters a young Cossack, Micha, who sexually accosts her. Telling Micha that she already belongs to another, she escapes to keep her rendezvous. Micha, now jealous, follows her and ends up taking part in a strange, mystical ceremony that transforms him, through the magic of word and flesh.

    With a preface discussing the Sacred Triangle and the magical symbol of the AUM Clock, both central symbols in Naglowska’s religious system as well as in the story, the book also includes a summary of the doctrine of the Third Term of the Trinity in de Naglowska’s own words--important to any student of the Western Mystery tradition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherInner Traditions
    Release dateFeb 1, 2012
    ISBN9781594777066
    The Sacred Rite of Magical Love: A Ceremony of Word and Flesh
    Author

    Maria de Naglowska

    Maria de Naglowska (1883-1936), also known as the Sophiale de Montparnasse, was a Russian occultist, mystic, and founder of the Brotherhood of the Golden Arrow, whose conferences in Paris in the 1930s were attended by many now-famous individuals, such as Julius Evola, Man Ray, and André Breton. She is also known for her translation of P. B. Randolph’s Magia Sexualis, the classic occult text that has survived only through her translation.

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      Book preview

      The Sacred Rite of Magical Love - Maria de Naglowska

      This [the magical union of man and woman] is a great mystery for the profane, and the most beautiful light for the initiate.

      MARIA DE NAGLOWSKA

      CONTENTS

      Cover Image

      Title Page

      Introduction: A Life of Magic and Mystery by Donald Traxler

      Preface: A Key that Opens Doors

      Chapter 1 — In the Mist of Thought

      Chapter 2 — The Birth to Love

      Chapter 3 — The Baptism

      Chapter 4 — The Test

      Chapter 5 — Joy on the Plain

      Chapter 6 — The Crossing

      Chapter 7 — On the Other Shore

      Chapter 8 — About the New Religion: The Doctrine of the Third Term of the Trinity

      Appendix A. The Two Editions of the Story

      TRANSLATIONS

      IN PREPARATION

      JOURNALISM

      Appendix B. The Aum Clock

      Appendix C. Naglowska’s Sources

      Index

      Footnotes

      Endnotes

      Bibliography

      About the Author

      About Inner Traditions • Bear & Company

      Books of Related Interest

      Copyright & Permissions

      INTRODUCTION

      A LIFE OF MAGIC AND MYSTERY

      Donald Traxler

      The Sacred Rite of Magical Love is the third in our series of works by Maria de Naglowska. It is an initiatic novelette, probably partly autobiographical. It was first serialized in the first eight issues of Naglowska’s street newspaper, La Flèche, organe d’action magique, from October 15, 1930, to December 15, 1931. Naglowska published the serialization under the pseudonym Xenia Norval.*1 She republished it as a supplement to her newspaper in the spring of 1932, this time using her real name. She sold this supplement with subscriptions to her newspaper, at her lectures, through the mail, and probably also on the streets of Montparnasse. It is both more personal and more mysterious than her other works.

      Who was this woman who tirelessly wrote, published, and spoke to share her spiritual vision with the world?

      Maria de Naglowska was born in St. Petersburg in 1883, the daughter of a prominent Czarist family.*2 She went to the best schools and got the best education that a young woman of the time could get. She fell in love with a young Jewish musician, Moise Hopenko, and married him against the wishes of her family. The ensuing rift with Maria’s family caused the young couple to leave Russia, going to Germany and then to Switzerland. After Maria had given birth to three children, her young husband, a Zionist, decided to leave his family and go to Palestine. This made things very difficult for Naglowska, who was forced to take various writing, translating, and journalism jobs to make ends meet. While she was living in Geneva she translated a book of philosophy from French to Russian,†3she wrote a French grammar for Russian immigrants to Switzerland,*4 and she reported on the Geneva peace talks that ended World War I.†5 Unfortunately, Naglowska’s libertarian ideas tended to get her into trouble with governments wherever she went. She spent the first part of the 1920s in Rome, where from 1921 to 1926 she worked on the review L’Italia. In 1927 she moved to Alexandria, Egypt, where she wrote for one publication‡6 and directed another.§7

      While in Rome, Maria de Naglowska met Julius Evola, a pagan traditionalist. Evola was also an occultist, being a member of the Group of Ur and counting among his associates some of the followers of Giuliano Kremmerz. It is said that Naglowska and Evola were lovers. It is known, at least, that they were associates for a long time. She translated one of his poems (La parole obscure du paysage intérieur; poème à 4 voix) into French (the only form in which it has survived), and he later translated some of her work into Italian.

      While occultists give a great deal of weight to Naglowska’s relationship with Evola, it is clear that there must have been other influences.*8 Some believe that she was influenced by the Russian sect of the Khlysti, and some believe that she knew Rasputin (whose biography she translated). Maria, though, gave the credit for some of her unusual ideas to an old Catholic monk whom she met in Rome. Although Maria said that he was quite well known there, he has never been identified.

      Maria said that the old monk gave her a piece of cardboard on which was drawn a triangle to represent the Trinity. The first two apexes of the triangle were clearly labeled to indicate the Father and the Son. The third, left more indistinct, was intended to represent the Holy Spirit. To Maria, the Holy Spirit was feminine. We don’t know how much was the monk’s teaching and how much was hers, but Maria taught that the Father represented Judaism and reason, while the Son represented Christianity, the heart, and an era whose end was approaching. To Maria, the feminine Spirit represented a new era, sex, and the reconciliation of the light and dark forces in nature.

      It is mostly this idea of the reconciliation of the light and dark forces that has gotten Maria into trouble and caused her to be thought of as a Satanist. Maria herself is partly responsible for this, having referred to herself as a satanic woman and used the name also in other ways in her writings. Evola, in his book The Metaphysics of Sex, mentioned her deliberate intention to scandalize the reader. Here is what Naglowska herself had to say about it.

      We forbid our disciples to imagine Satan (= the spirit of evil or the spirit of destruction) as living outside of us, for such imagining is proper to idolaters; but we recognize that this name is true.

      In 1929 Naglowska moved to Paris, where she got the unwelcome news that she would not be given a work permit. Deprived of the ability to be employed in a regular job, she would have to depend on her own very considerable survival skills. She first worked as cotranslator of a biography of Rasputin, which was published in 1930.² She then began work on the book for which she is best known today, her translation of Magia Sexualis by Paschal Beverly Randolph. This work by the American hermetist and sex theorist is known only in Naglowska’s translation, which was published in 1931.³ I have put the word translation in quotation marks because it is really a compilation. Only about two-thirds of the work can be identified as being from Randolph. The rest is from sources only beginning to be identified, or from Naglowska herself, and the organization of the material is clearly her contribution as well.

      While Naglowska was working on Magia Sexualis, she began giving lectures or conferences on an original teaching of her own. She called it the Doctrine of the Third Term of the Trinity. Her conferences were at first often held in cafés. The proprietors of these venues were pleased with the influx of patrons and often gave Maria free food and coffee. In a short time her following grew to the point where she could afford to rent a large, bare room, which held thirty to forty people, for her private meetings. It was thus that Maria survived.

      Maria’s income was supplemented by her publishing endeavors. In late 1930 she began publishing a little newspaper, to which she and other occultists contributed, called La Flèche, Organe d’Action Magique. It was the public voice of her magical group, La Confrérie de la Flèche d’Or.

      In late 1932 Naglowska published La Lumière du sexe,⁴ published in English in the current series as The Light of Sex.⁵ In 1934 she published Le Mystère de la pendaison,⁶ published in this English series as Advanced Sex Magic: The Hanging Mystery Initiation.⁷ These two books were required reading for even First Degree initiation into Naglowska’s magical group and contained all of the doctrine of her new religion, the Third Term of the Trinity, and much of its

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